Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg

Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg (1150 – 22 February 1217), also called Yehuda HeHasid or Judah the Pious in Hebrew, was a leader of the Ashkenazi Hasidim a movement of Jewish mysticism in Germany (not to be confused with the 18th-century Hasidic Judaism founded by the Baal Shem Tov).

Judah was born in 1150 in the small town of Speyer, now in the Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, but later settled in Regensburg, now in Bavaria, in 1195. He wrote much of Sefer Hasidim ("Book of the Pious"), as well as a work about Gematria and Sefer Hakavod (Book of Glory), the latter has been lost and is only known by quotations that other authors have made from it. His most prominent students were Elazar Rokeach, Isaac ben Moses of Vienna author of Or Zarua and perhaps also Moses ben Jacob of Coucy according to Chaim Yosef David Azulai.